Math Is Like a Scary Movie? Helping Young People Overcome Math Anxiety

One day, as I was working with a student after school on a problem involving division with decimals, I told him which number goes in the “division house.” Suddenly the student blurted out, “That is not what my teacher told me, and I hate math!” I knew I had not yet found the key to helping this student. Was I addressing how he felt about math? Should I put the problem away and start over with the beauty of decimals, those smaller-than-one numbers that enable us to measure the speed of an Olympic athlete, the diameter of a pinhead, or the exact length of a ladybug? Teaching afterschool allows for such inner dialogues. As a learning support specialist providing academic support services both during school time and after school, I had the opportunity to dig deep.

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